See the update at the end! Did you know you can compost your shredded paper? It’s great with used coffee grounds! You probably already know that coffee grounds are a valuable addition to your compost bin, but learning about using shredded paper was like an epiphany for me! It feeds my garden, helps avoid adding…
Rather than just letting your flowerbed go dormant in the winter, consider this — here in northern California, we can grow some fantastic winter flowers. It just takes a little planning ahead and sowing while it’s still warm. And hey, I get the fact that you may having some of that end-of-summer garden fatigue (too…
I have the good fortune of working at home most days, and it’s great. But one downside is that many of my neighbors are fairly well-off retirees who hire professional gardeners to care for their lawns, and the noise is distracting! Mowers, weedeaters, lawn edgers, and leaf blowers — they all seem to use gasoline-powered…
I’ve wanted to build raised beds for some time, and we decided this was the year to go big for our veggie garden! I came up with my own design idea, but I’ll tell you what I’d do differently in a minute. We had to make some decisions on lumber, placement, hardware, and irrigation, which…
We’ve been starting seeds for the past couple of weeks. Isn’t is exciting to watch them sprout and develop? I find myself checking on them five times a day or more, waiting for the surprise arrival when those first seedlings pop out of the soil. The paper towel-baggie trick One of the tricks I’ve used…
We’ve been in this house for almost two years now, and we love our orange and lemon trees! It’s so refreshing to be back in California and to be able to grow our own citrus. The orange tree is some navel variety, and the fruit is huge. By the size of the trunk, I’m guessing…
Did you know you can grow bananas in northern California Zone 9? I started seeing a few here and there around Fair Oaks, and at first I thought they were giant bird of paradise. But a little googling, and I found a website about a guy in West Sacramento who sells banana plants and kind…
Here’s a great article from Fast Company about farmers in the UK testing the use of flowers to attract beneficial insects instead of using pesticides. They’re testing using new technology to make it easier to plant rows of flowers among the crops. This attracts beneficial insects, like parasitic wasps that eat aphids. Pretty cool! And…